April 1, 2009

Moving Day

Fast sketch ... more of an idea that isn't fully realized yet. The interesting thing that I'm finally hammering through my thick skull is that sometimes I have to draw the thing that isn't what I want to draw in order to figure out what it is I do want to draw.

In this case, I needed to draw a very literal piece before I could realize that I want to draw a concept instead.

I used to do that kind of writing all the time - character sketches, family histories, story pieces ... and then trash it all and write the story I needed to write. For some reason, it's harder for me to remember that sometimes I need to work myself into a drawing as much as I used to work myself into a story.

At any rate, this is the preliminary work. I've got a couple of projects that will probably take precedence over the finished piece, so it'll be a while before I post that.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:28 AM | Comments (4) | Sketches | Stumble

March 24, 2009

Great Glern - Inked

Yesterday I showed the pencil sketch of the critter from page 86 of Little Monster's You-Can-Make-It Book, The Great Glern of the Sea. Today is the ink:

I may get around to doing a digital colouring of him later on, but not any time soon. I had a massive freaking allergy attack Sunday and have been mostly off-line since as my eyes are swollen and the computer is really hurting them.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:52 AM | Comments (2) | Sketches | Stumble

March 21, 2009

Fixer-Upper

I have promised myself to sketch every day at lunch. This was a rough pencil idea - punchline wasn't well delivered, but hey, I like the concept and the little characters. Kind of going back to my beloved Mercer Mayer roots here.

Click to bigify in a new window/tab - makes the text more readable. I just don't have the patience to draw my letters & my handwriting sucks.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:08 AM | Comments (1) | Sketches | Stumble

March 14, 2009

Keep Medicated

So, one of my favourite Twitterers the other day said something I not only found highly amusing, but I instantly knew I wanted to draw it as well. Mooshinindy said: "Keep medicated for best results."

I really did laugh out loud when I first saw that tweet. As much as when Felicia Day said "Cutting back to bare min on sxsw posts A) most ppl aren't here and don't care B) I just walked face first into a street sign while tweeting"

So, the hand-sketch and inked version is below. I may do a version in spot colour in Illustrator as well if there seems to be any interest in it.

Posted by Red Monkey at 8:04 AM | Comments (1) | Sketches | Stumble

February 18, 2009

Creature in Andrew Bell's Head

My preferred form of furthering my ability to draw is to find a great drawing or sketch that I like and then mimicking it. It's a common exercise in a lot of fields to mimic "the greats" and learn both your own style - what you'd have done differently - and how to finesse your style as well. So, in the process of cruising through some really nice new art blogs, I discovered Andrew Bell's The Creatures in my Head. He's got loads of wonderful work ... great desktop vectors, resin and vinyl toys ... and my favourite - some great creature sketches in pencil.

I saw this little guy and knew that I needed to practice shading with this sketch.

At the same time, I have a tendency to try too hard to make my sketches look exactly like what I'm mimicking. So I decided I wanted to focus on the shading practice ... and practice adding some of my own style rather than getting it as close as possible to the original. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out - I dislike my drool puddle, but then I didn't spend much time on it either, so I got what I put into it. I'll have to try that again another time.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:56 PM | Comments (1) | Sketches | Stumble

February 8, 2009

Illustrated MP3 Player

Last time, I posted the rough sketch of the MP3 player for a client. After talking with the client, she indicated the car was cool, but she preferred motorcycles. I'm still in the process of adapting the various buttons to work on a motorcycle, but here's the current update:

Hopefully I'll have this completed and working by the end of next weekend.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:22 PM | Comments (2) | Design | Sketches | Stumble